Pa Kua Tribe

Name: Pa Kua

Type of Faction: Tribal

Faction Leader: The Grand Master

Active Characters: Danveris - tba (to be accepted)

Other Notable Figures: The Three: Adam, the god of the Man, Bark, the god of Earth, and Clawson, the god of the Heavens - the primary deities of the tribe.

Goals: Rather than say that the Pa Kua tribe have no long term goal, it can be said that their current objective is their holy mission – survival. The tribe feels a deep connection to the Earth, to the wasteland. They feel it is a form of worship to hunt down animals and forage wild plants for sustenance. The strength they get from eating gives them the energy to move to a new location to start the cycle again. As such, and partly due to their history, Pa Kuas are deeply attached to their traditions and culture. Simply enacting it on a day to day basis is their continual struggle.

Beliefs: The Pa Kuas belief system is influenced by the original Chinese martial art that the tribe sprung out of (of course, by the time the Great War came around the origins of where the martial art came from was greatly downplayed in the United States out of fear of being labeled Communist spies), the Christian notion of the Trinity as many early tribesmen were familiar with, and the three original founders – James Adams, Wilson Burke, and Tyler Clawson, who the religion eventually surrounded itself on.

Doctrine:

In the beginning was the spirit of Nothing, it alone existed in all there was – the death of everything, inherent Darkness. But, as eons past and it's darkness expanded, it became weak, and through it light and life were brought forth from the Nothingness. But then the First Son, Bark, he created the Earth, the planets and the stars out of the Nothingness, filling it with life, beauty and wonder. But the Nothingness was not fully gone, the Second Son, Clawson, was both his antithesis and yet complimentary and sought to bring the life back to it's original state. And so he corrupted the Earth and sought to blot out the stars one by one. From then on, Bark and Clawson continued to fight over Earth and all the universe, filling it with life, animals, trees and flowing water, and then having it die off all over again. From this constant interplay of Death and Life, the Third Son was born amidst them.

The First Birth.

Adam, a creation between Bark and Clawson, brought forth his own creation: man. By doing mankind neutralized and was subjected to both heaven and earth. From that point on, they swirled in constant clashing, merging and neutralization of each other existing in the world yet separate, while their creation stewed in confusion, creating life desperate from them.

This led to death, war and plague, but also new life and beauty. A cycle of death and rebirth throughout the ages. Until, one day, it came to a head – where death loomed over all, threatening to end life completely. And so brought on the Final Death and the Second Birth.

To restore the balance, the Three gathered it's chosen people, and one night gave life to them while brought death to those who sought to completely upset the balance. On the day when fire rained from the Heavens, they descended and their landing shook the Earth, creating the Great Crater, from which they and their chosen people emerge – new Mankind for the new Earth. There at the foot of the Crater they taught their people the secrets of the gods. And once that sacred knowledge was passed they ascended back up to the spiritual world leaving their people to thrive on their own.

However, their people struggled. And Adam, the god of Earth, sought to bring them to a new land, a new beginning to embrace what he had brought forth on the planet. Choosing to take on a form of the man he reincarnated himself among them in the Third, and last, Birth, and brought those who were faithful in the tribe away, while those who were fallen fell and forgot their ways. From that moment on the Adam led their People on the Crossing of the wastes to the far east. So that they alone know of the truth, and can continue to live in the sacred knowledge.

Lifestyle:

To the tribe, both death and life, good and bad, male and female, things that had priory been considered binary oppositions to each other in the pre-War era were seen as two sides of a whole. The individual distinctions between each other was more or less downplayed for unity among the tribe (this aesthetic was later taken advantage of during the split). As such, they purpose was not so much to believe in them for the sake of gaining life after death as in the Christian tradition, but rather the purpose of belief was to merely exist within the complete whole of life and death, to see neither one side as good or the other as bad but as defining each other.

Due to this, worship of the Three was merely a matter of continual existence. For instance, the 24 Movements – stretches done before any strenuous exercises – are broken up into three different sections,. Heaven movements which are stretches for the head, neck and arms, Man movements, which are done with feet shoulder length apart and stretches the chest and torso, and the Earth movements which are done are the ground and stretches out the legs. The movements along with meditation and yoga, tai chi and martial arts and the hunt are all considered worship towards the Three.

Allegiances: Unaligned

Enemies: Legion



Headquarters: As a nomadic tribe, they have no set headquarters. However, the abandoned village Crate and specifically the Great Crater is a holy site to them, and occasionally a few youths attempt the Crossing for their ritual, a pilgrimage that none ever return from.

Locations: Much like having no headquarters, the tribe also have no set location, but rather stay on a migratory path, revisiting locations in Virgina yearly that they know are safe – or at least relatively safe, before packing up once more.

Armaments: The daily regiment that every tribesman goes through focuses on three areas of combat. Martial arts, archery and edge weapons. All weapons are handcrafted, either from the scavenged metals from long dead ruins or from the bones of creatures slain.

Armor and Uniform: The animals slain provide hide, which can be fashioned into blankets and skins for the tents. However, the most important use is for garments. During daily life, loose fitting rags are worn around the hips and torso, along with a recent addition of padded moccasins and sturdier boots for hikes. All members of the tribe also have tattoos on their foreheads, to indicate their position in the family. They are made up of three lines, either solid or divided down the middle.

The other form of facial artwork that the tribe does is only in times of death, either combat or on a hunt. They would paint around their eyes and nose black, for the Heavens, ears red for Mankind, and mouth white for the Earth. During these times the tribe also makes use of two different types of armor, regular leather armor, used by hunters and scouts to be light on their feet, and reinforced leather armor, worn only during combat situations where the tribe may expect to be shot or stabbed.

Vehicles: The primary means of transportation are brahmin, which serves both as a beast of burden being loaded with weaponry, pottery, hides (more than a few being brahmin hides themselves) and occasionally the sick or elderly and also providers of both milk and meat. Most importantly though the largest brahmin was reserved for carrying the Bark Tent which belonged solely to the Grand Master and his Family.

Technology: The Pa Kua tribe, like all tribals, is rather primitive. They've only have a handful of technological knowledge that they work with. They know pottery and how to shape bowls out of the clay that they dig up from the wasteland soils. They also know metal work and how to forge weapons like swords, arrowheads and spears out of metal salvage from ruins (the Masters also have metal pans, pots, plates and silverware that was scavenged from the Wastes that they use instead of the clay pottery). Lastly, they know how to craft bows and staffs out of wood and leather clothes, armor and hides for tents and blankets.

Other: The tribe's survival skills have been developed and nurtured during the Crossing many hundreds of years ago. Also, due to their migration path through various regions around Virgina they are also aware of nearby plant and animals, and, more importantly, how to avoid the more monstrous mutants that arrows, swords and spears would be no match against. The dyes they use for for the trigrams on their foreheads and the warpaint are primarily just grounded up Wasteland plants or animal parts found in the wild. Particularly, buffalo gourd seeds, barrel cactus fruit and boatfly venom (watered and boiled and then left to dry for a couple hours)

Numbers: Within the tribe there is one Grand Master who oversees the tribe, underneath him there are three Masters, each with eight Instructors. Each has a wife and two children. These forty eight form the Families, with the Grand Master and his family known as the Grand Family. Outside the Families is the rest of the tribes, made up of the descendents of the original five families that joined the Three for the Crossing. Their total number is a hundred and two, making for a grand total of a hundred and fifty.

However, that number has varied over time. Outside the obvious fact that the rest of the tribe is used as either front line warriors or less skilled hunters in the face of mutated beasts, the trials of traveling in a post apocalyptic world always causes some casualties.

Then there is also the culling, though no one within the Pa Kua tribe would call it such. Each son of a Family must face a Rite. The eldest male must take the First Blood, where he must go out and kill one person who is harmful to the tribe (be it a nearby raider or a hapless traveler intruding on tribal lands and bring back a trophy of his victory, after which he becomes a warrior. While the younger son goes on the Hunt (no one confuses it with a regular hunt) with which he goes to kill the toughest prey he can be it Mirelurks, Yao Guais or, heaven help the fools who try, Deathclaws, after which he comes with his prize and becomes a hunter. For the Third Son, there is the Crossing. He must cross the country to reach the west coast, finding the Great Crater and reflecting on the wonder of the Three's landing, before turning around and returning home.

Should one of the sons never come back, the Families are sadden of course, however the younger son quickly becomes the eldest (though he is still known as the Second Son) and a new son or daughter is then born to keep the “holy” number of the Families the same. However, while no one wants a First or Second Son to die during a Rite, the unspoken, acknowledge truth is that a Third Son will never return, keeping the numbers right and (more importantly) manageable.

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James Adams was born and raised in Anaheim, CA. He ended up attending college locally at Chapman University, where he found the martial arts center of Pa Kua right within walking distance. While he was growing up, he had a bit of interest in the sport, but he had been more focused on the great American pastime of baseball and had been a big Angels fan. But he quickly found that he did not have enough talent to make it into college baseball, and needing to find a new sport to get into, tried Pa Kua.

The decision changed his life.

He found not a sport, but rather a lifestyle. Pa Kua provided not only physical training for the body with its variety of classes in martial arts, edge weaponry, acrobatics (God, it took him forever to learn how to fall and roll properly) and archery but also a whole philosophy devoted to better one's mental, physical and relational connections. It also turned out that his roommate, Tyler Clawson, went there, which only helped solidified their budding friendship.

But it also turned the government's suspicion against them.

It turned out despite Pa Kua's insistence that it had nothing at all to do with the Communist Bastards across the Pacific they still had their doubts. And their primary targets at Pa Kua was James and Tyler, who not only were roommates, but had many of the same courses seeing as they were both Business majors and spent much of their off hours together either at Pa Kua, working out at the campus gym or going out to baseball games or a nearby theme park with their friends (which James thought he was far too old for, but tagged along anyway)– obviously a arrangement that only a duo of Chinese spies could set up.

While the investigation got nowhere they still managed to shut down the martial arts academy. Suddenly finding nothing to do, the two instead focused on the government’s and it's strenuous relationship with China. The two considering it had so thoroughly messed with their lives. Adams hadn't taken the war all too seriously before than. James had been born on the day that Israel was bombed, and he had been studying about ancient wars in History when the Chinese invaded Alaska. While slightly worried, his parents assured him that there was no way that the Reds could ever invade the good US of A seeing that they managed to annex Canada by sure might so they could easily nuke a few Chinamen before they got across the Pacific. Since then, James had been secure and wondered laughingly at the panic that so many people had over yet another war.

But that changed the day the government mistook him and his best friend for spies. All of a sudden his faith in the United States was shaken. If they could mistake him for a spy, then what about the real spies? Were they getting away with it? Was the push against corporate espionage (part of the reason why James wanted to get into Business in the first place) more than just vigilance? After brewing over it for a few days, James managed to convince Tyler and five other friends to check out the Demonstration Vault in LA after a Cry Wolf signal.

It's what saved their lives.

After a period of panic when the friends found themselves locked in the Vault after they were expecting to just inspect it during another false alarm. After days and weeks they started to settle into a routine. In specific, James and Tyler began to teach them all martial arts. Soon enough whole groups began to form around them – new members who were interested, in part out of little to do in the Vault but more out of fear of what they'll find when the Vault opens up after twenty years. The group became strongly bonded together, and they decided no matter what they would stick together – after they had visited each of their homes to see what was left.

One of those newcomers was Wilson Burke.

Wilson Burke was a family man. By the time he was in his forties he had a nice suburban house over in Fullerton, was married, worked for a Nuka Cola company over in LA, and, during vacations, like hiking and camping out in the Mojave Desert. In fact, he had even brought some of his gear with him into the vault as he had been prepared, just like he had during all the Cry Wolf alarms. Oddly, it seemed that his family was more shaken up that he was right than the rest of the Vault dwellers.

During the next twenty years, the trio formed a tightknit group, teaching those underneath them both the main tenets of Pa Kua along with survival skills. While they did not have any swords or bows available the group made use of a few batons from some Vault guards who took the classes. They believed, when it was finally time to open the Vault twenty years later, that they were as ready as they would ever be.

They were wrong.

They weren't sure what they were expecting. But stepping out to find LA a wreckage, a boneyard of the dead and the crumbled skyscrappers was traumatizing. So much so that other Vault dwellers fell to their knees, sobbing. The irradiation buzzed and burned, but still the students of Pa Kua climbed over the ruins. Some had lived here in LA, so they had already got their answer, but for the three Masters they still had to return to Orange County.

So they went. On foot. Past the wreckage and further south. As they went, the radiation spiked, burning all the more fiercely. Soon, it became too radioactive for the rest of the makeshift tribe to go any further. It was left to the Three Masters and their Instructors to go deeper in.

They came back after everyone else had already set up for the night. At first, they thought that Tyler and Wilson were throwing up because of the radiation. But then James came, staggering, and merely muttered, “Nothing. There's nothing. Nothing left.”

From that point on Orange County was known as the Great Crater to the Pa Kua tribe.

With nothing left, the tribe moved to the outskirts of the Crater and set up camp on a hill – far enough from the radiation, but close enough to see it daily. The following night James asked Tyler to go out to explore because of his nightly jogs pre-War he should be better at seeing in the dark. For a moment, Tyler looked blankly at him, before quickly agreeing and heading off.

However, James never forgot that brief moment of hesitation. Despite himself he couldn't rest, and though his wife asked him what's wrong he continued to pace in the tent Burke graciously provided. He wanted to believe that Tyler had merely forgotten, it had been twenty years after all, but suspicions, odd phrases that Tyler used to say were falling into place for the first time.

After his best friend came back after his scouting mission, James confronted him by the Crater. He didn't know what to think, but James was fairly sure that Tyler never actually took jogs. The confrontation got heated, words were thrown, and then, by slip of tongue, Tyler let the fact that he knew that this was going to happen escape. After a moment of stunned silence, Tyler decided that it was too late anyway so he confessed. His true name was Sheng Wang. His family had been immigrants to China many decades ago and had married other immigrants there. He had transferred to America on a mission and he gave that information every night via radio messages.

If Sheng had thought the damage was done, he was wrong. James lunged at him and a fight broke out. It got so loud and violent that Wilson, who was sleeping nearby, was woken up. And, seeing the brawl between the two leaders went down to break them apart. However, instead, he merely tipped them off balance and all three of them fell into the Crater. The radiation killed them before the fall did.

In the morning, the tribe was in disarray. They didn't know what to do with their three Masters gone. During the panic, in order to calm everyone down, Tyler's wife admitted the truth having seen what happened but too afraid to go down. However, rather than calm them down, the tribe gathered her up and threw her down the Crater with them. From that day on, the Pa Kua tribe could barely mention the Crater the tribe overlooked without talking about it in fevered whispers.

Years past like that, with a new generation born within the village overlooking the Crater, appropriately named Crate. However, it was not to last. Rumors came down of a army forming under a mysterious Master. Feeling as if it was a ill omen, the tribe decided it was time to leave, just as the Master came and started to build a Citadel over the LA Vault.

Their home abandoned in the wake of the Master's coming, the tribe moved across the Colorado river and into Arizona. They quickly discovered that there were others like them, on the move and focused into gangs. Soon enough the tribe was caught up into cycles of warfare, migration, scavenging and hunting. Years and years passed, to the point where time began to blur ceaselessly and all the old truths became legends that their religion, their core culture, formed itself around. They were settled. Content. Separate from the rest of the post apocalyptic world in their path of blood.
But then came Caesar.

In 2247, nearly a hundred years since they fled from the Great Crater because of the onslaught of the Master and his army, once again the tribe faced a threat far greater than they were. However, this time, they were divided on what to do. Many in the tribe saw what the Blackfoot had done in their display of total war and sought to capitulate to Caesar. However, another portion wanted to stand and fight, knowing that their skills, which had been more than a match for the untrained tribals for nearly a century, could compete even if the others did have guns.

It was during this time of confusion that Handiva an Instructor in the art of achery under the Grand Master spoke up. Renaming himself as Adam, he claimed to be the god of Mankind himself, Adam, who has been reincarnated once more in this lifetime to lead his people across the wastes to a land free of turmoil. Of course, the Grand Master and the other Masters would not take this lightly. So Adam and his followers fought them off, in the first ever instance of internal unrest, as they managed to escape, fleeing into the deep east. And so Ceasar came and the rest of the tribe capitulated. However they, as Legionaries, continue to wish to find those who had betrayed them and see them crucified. And the tribe knew it, so long as they stayed in the shadow of the Legion, those of the eighty six tribes who had joined would not forget this tribe that got away.

So the remains of the Pa Kua tribe did their Crossing landing in the heartlands of Postwar Virgina.

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For real life information about Pa Kua go to this link: www.pakuamcdonald.com/About/Origin-of-Pa-Kua.html